Meetings industry attorney Tyra Hilliard shares legal contract tips for meeting and event planners faced with destination boycotts, such as corporate bans on travel to Alabama, Missouri and Georgia following a surge of strict anti-abortion laws. She also explains what a frustration of purpose clause is and how it can protect your event from liability.

Legislation strictly limiting abortion rights in Alabama, Georgia and Missouri has resulted in numerous states and cities forbidding the use of civic funds for employee travel to these destinations. The potential impact on meetings and conventions from destination boycotts is creating fear of an industry-wide calamity.

Here are some key points about laws regulating service animals that meeting and event planners and facilities need to be aware of in order to be in compliance. Military veterans often come to meetings with service animals as a treatment to cope with PTSD.

Most hotels in the U.S. say they are “ADA Compliant.” This checklist will guide you to look at what makes a meeting or event accommodating beyond the ADA requirements.

Contracts are important to meetings and events in that they ensure both parties understand the terms of an agreement and have apportioned risk in an acceptable way between them. Following are my “top 10” essential contract tips that you can implement into contract negotiations and execution.

The Washington State Court of Appeals blocked a so-called “panic button” law for hotels in Seattle on Monday, December 24, 2018. According to the unanimous ruling, Seattle Initiative Measure 124 violated the “single subject condition,” which stops disparate rules being combined into a single law.

There were a number of notable hotel strikes and labor actions in major meetings and conventions destinations across the U.S. in 2018, with actions against Marriott International by the UNITE HERE labor union grabbing headlines throughout the back half of 2018.

On Wednesday, December 12, 2018, one week after 7,500 hospitality workers at 24 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange County voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes, 800 workers were set to celebrate the Catholic holiday, Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe with public actions in front of Southern California hotels: The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles, Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills, Hilton Anaheim and Sheraton Park Hotel.

Meetings Today's Joan Eisenstodt asks meetings professionals for their candid opinions on ethics.

Baltimore-based law firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, along with co-counsel Morgan & Morgan, announced on November 30, 2018, it had filed a class action lawsuit against Marriott International “on behalf of over 500 million customers whose personal information, including their names, birthdates, addresses, locations, gender information email addresses, payment card information, and passport information were stolen.”